You were lucky that you sent at a time without overload though there are times at a day when it does not work except you pay fees that more and more look like paypal fees.
Bullshit. The fees are not unusually high, and nowhere near the maximum that we've experienced. They're currently at: 40 satoshis/byte [1]. For a TX of 226 bytes that is 4 cents. Quite like paypal, indeed. 
I welcome segwit but it surely can't bring the huge effect as fast as needed. Well, maybe it will surprise.
It will be fine.[1] - https://bitcoinfees.21.co/
I often enough had to send with 0.20$, which is less than half of the minimum paypal fee and clearly it goes in this direction.
I'm really not sure about the effect of segwit since the effects that are hoped on are mostly calculated with a way higher amount of multisig transactions, as far as I remind correctly. I'm really not sure that we can build on this. Of course even when it not brings nearly to 50$, every 10% is a nice thing. Only the big question is if it really will help avoiding full blocks.
And segwit... as far as I learned about it... I don't see a usecase for me and I doubt many other users have. If one has as much coins to block it in some payment channel then ok, possible LN user. But most users have the amount for one payment, that's it. So the LN effect won't be high too. Besides that... LN is not really a loved thing.